Bibliophile Collection

Hello there. I have something very exciting to share with you today, if slightly different from what I usually post on here. A few weeks ago, I was approached by Sebrina Schultz who has a an Etsy store where, among other things, she sells digital paintings of books. I had a look around her shop and was really impressed with her work, so when she offered to design a custom Bibliophile Collection digital painting of up to ten books of my choice, I was super excited. 

From the picture I sent her of the spines I chose, she created this amazing digital painting:

I love how well the details on the spines turned out, especially on Daughter of Smoke & Bone and A Game of Thrones. Overall, I was really pleased with the result and so Sebrina had it printed and sent to me immediately. Only two weeks later, the finished piece arrived at my house, in perfect condition and exactly how I had imagined it. It looks exactly like in the picture she sent me and the quality of the paper and everything is perfect. Also, the packaging was really nice, with some lovely details here and there.

If you're interested in getting your own digital painting, I strongly recommend having a look at Sebrina's Etsy store. You can get the design she made for me (here) as well as many other lovely predesigned pieces. And if none of those are quite the way you'd want yours to be, Sebrina also offers custom made pieces like the one she did for me (here). You can get them in different sizes and I would recommend maybe going for something bigger than 8x10, which is the size of mine and turned out to be rather small (I know I shouldn't have been surprised but still). 

Until March 31, you can get a 20% discount on anything in her shop, using the code SCHAKARIN. Also, she's hosting a Buffalo Sale on March 10, releasing 5 new prints, so you might want to head over there then.

Let me know if you decide to order one of Sebrina's designs and what you think.

Review: The Duff

The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend
by Kody Keplinger
Publication date: September 7, 2010
Published by: Little Brown / Poppy
Paperback, 277 pages
My rating: 4/5 ★

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper may not be the prettiest girl in her high school, but she has a loyal group of friends, a biting wit, and a spot-on BS detector. She's also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush, who calls Bianca the Duff--the designated ugly fat friend--of her crew.

But things aren't so great at home and Bianca, desperate for a distraction, ends up kissing Wesley. Worse, she likes it. Eager for escape, Bianca throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with him.

Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out Wesley isn't such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she's falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone.

I really enjoyed The DUFF and was positively surprised. It was exactly what I needed at the time, a light and quick read but also refreshingly different from what I expected. Unlike the regular contemporary, it was pretty straight forward overall and far less dramatic than I thought it would be (well, okay, there were some overdramatic moments but they didn't bother me that much). The story was rather predictable, as I'm sure most of you will expect from the short summary, but I still very much liked to read about the path to the expected (kind of obvious) ending. 

I could sympathize with Bianca - her life at home was a mess and with people just not talking about their problems, it couldn't be easy. Unfortunately, she herself didn't always manage to say what needed to be said and that always bothers me with main characters. Especially with how she acted towards her friends, I mostly couldn't support and understand her actions. Overall, Bianca was kind of an annoying character at times but it was easily bearable. Her way of escaping her sorrows and distracting herself from her problems was so different, unexpected and fun to read about, it made up for her less glamorous and more brain-dead moments. She surprised me more than once with her not very well thought through decisions but I kind of loved that about the book.

What I liked most about the story was that things were actually happening from the very beginning and then slowly developed from there. I liked the whole build-up and especially Kody Keplinger's writing. The relationship between Bianca and Wesley developed slowly (with some lucky coincidences here and there) and felt very real. 

I would recommend this book to anyone with a love for contemporary and in need for a fun and light read. It's perfect to lift your mood on a rainy day and small enough to also get through on said day. If you don't like predictable plots and/or characters that are terrible at making reasonable decisions, you'll probably have your issues with this book. But with the movie coming out very soon, I would recommend everyone to give it a go, because the movie looks just as fun as the book.

Update

Well, hello there. I haven't uploaded anything to this blog in February yet and that makes me feel so bad. Worst of all, I don't even have a good excuse for why I haven't been posting for the past (almost) two weeks. So I just thought I would give you a general life updated of what has been going on here lately and maybe you'll understand just a tiny little bit why blogging hasn't been my top priority.

• So, first of all, Uni is starting again next week, which means I am starting my second semester and big bad exams are waiting for me at the end of it (only in June but I'm already very much freaking out). That also means that I'm currently enjoying my very last week of free time.

• My boyfriend had exams until the beginning of February and before that we didn't really have a lot of time to spend together. So we're catching up on that at the moment. Yesterday, for example, we went sledding with some of our friends and enjoyed a lovely sunny day in the snow. 

• We currently have a dog living with us. Admittedly, this doesn't really have an impact on my blogging, but it's still exciting. Her name is Ginger and she is super cute. My sister is dog-sitting her for a week and a half and I'm just taking a lot of pictures of her and not being very helpful at all.
• Most importantly, though, I haven't been reading a lot in February. I only finished The Bane Chronicles two days ago (finally) and then picked up The DUFF yesterday (which I also finished yesterday, so that's good). And when I'm in a little bit of a reading slump, I'm usually also in a 'blogging slump' since I do get pretty much all the inspiration for my blog from the books I read (which is pretty obvious considering it's a book blog).

Ugh, these are really bad excuses but I just didn't feel like blogging or reading or anything except being lazy and playing video games or watch movies/TV shows with my boyfriend (we are loving Outlander at the moment). I hope you can understand, I'm sure everyone is going through times like this.

BUT I obviously want to get back on track and show some more love for this blog. I might want to change a few things, though. First of all, I'm not really happy with doing Top 5 Wednesday anymore. I loved posting these in the past, but lately I couldn't really find anything for the given topics, so I just posted nothing at all. Since I do love lists and it's, to be honest, also easier to write something for a given topic, maybe, maybe I'll join Top 10 Tuesday instead. I love reading those posts but choosing ten for each topic is intimidating to me.

Also, I want to (kind of) defend myself and mention this. I haven't been slacking everywhere. On Instagram, I'm doing the #feb15bookchallenge #halfbloodvalentines challenge and post a picture every day in February for that one. Which might not be impressive to most of you, but to me it is. Let me know if you have a bookish instagram, I love to follow new people.

Okay, so that's it, I believe, for what I wanted to talk about today. I hope you don't mind me rambling about my life from time to time. 

How is your February going so far?

January Wrap-Up

Don't mind all the balloons in this post, it's my sister's birthday today.

Well hello there. Unfortunately, January is already coming to an end and university is starting again soon. But I'm here today to talk about happier things: the books I read in the very first month of 2015! Even though I had to study quite a bit this month (exams suck) and am also working, I found time to read 9 books in January. This isn't the most books in a month I've ever read but I'm still happy with it, considering that some of these books were quite big. 

ARC Review: One of the Guys

I received a free copy of this book through Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion or my review of the book in any way. Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with this eARC!

One of the Guys
by Lisa Aldin
Publication date: February 10, 2015
Published by: Spencer Hill Press
Kindle Edition, 320 pages
My rating: 4/5 ★

Tomboy to the core, Toni Valentine understands guys. She'll take horror movies, monster hunts and burping contests over manicures. So Toni is horrified when she's sent to the Winston Academy for Girls, where she has to wear a skirt and learn to be a lady while the guys move on without her.

Then Toni meets Emma Elizabeth, a girl at school with boy troubles, and she volunteers one of her friends as a pretend date. Word spreads of Toni’s connections with boys, and she discovers that her new wealthy female classmates will pay big money for fake dates. Looking for a way to connect her old best friends with her new life at school, Toni and Emma start up Toni Valentine’s Rent-A-Gent Service.

But the business meets a scandal when Toni falls for one of her friends--the same guy who happens to be the most sought-after date. With everything she's built on the line, Toni has to decide if she wants to save the business and her old life, or let go of being one of the guys for a chance at love.

One of the Guys was a fun and light read but our main character also deals with some more difficult things. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and read the whole thing in a day because I couldn't put it down. The story really surprised me. It focuses on friendship and also family besides the (obvious) romance. All of these themes were equally as prominent and I really liked that.

The friendships in One of the Guys are perfect and felt very real. Toni has always been a part of a group of four friends and she starts to realize that they are growing apart a little. Her fear of losing her friends came across really well in my opinion and I could relate to Toni a lot because of it. She didn't always deal with it in the best way, but who does? Overall she seemed like a pretty straight-forward person and I really liked that. She does have major problems with telling people how she feels and, even though as a reader it was a little annoying at times, it showed her character development perfectly throughout the book.

Character development. Toni goes through a lot of that and it was wonderful to watch. In the beginning she really is tomboy to the core but with time and especially with befriending Emma, she realizes that she wants to 'embrace her womanhood', as she puts it. This went really well together with the other things she's discovering about herself and coming to terms with.

The romance was also really well done in my opinion. No instalove but a friendship that slowly grows into something more and I just really enjoyed to read about it and see it develop. I will say, though, that Toni has absolutely no clue when it comes to love and feelings and just doesn't see things that are completely obvious to the reader. But since it really fit her character, it didn't bother me for the most part.

Whereas I liked the story a lot overall, I also had some minor problems with it. Toni seemed like a pretty reasonable character most of the time. She even realizes at times that her problems might not be the biggest ones out there and those are the scenes that positively surprised me (because, really, what YA character ever does that?). But she also has those moments when I just wanted to shake her and scream at her that what she's doing is STUPID. The business she starts being one of them. That whole aspect of the story really wasn't my favorite. It just screamed trouble from the very beginning and those kinds of things really annoy me in books. But gladly, the story had a lot of other focuses too and it all balanced out very well.

I would recommend One of the Guys to anyone who likes contemporary but is looking for something a little different. There is romance but it doesn't overshadow the other aspects of the story and I really liked that. Also, the book is very well written and you'll just fly through it.

On the Topic of Angels

Well, hi there. As you may or may not know, I'm currently reading the Daughter of Smoke & Bones trilogy by Laini Taylor. And it's got me thinking, so today I'm going to talk about something a little different on here (nothing deep or anything, don't worry).

Angels are these beautiful, elegant and graceful creatures and honestly, who wouldn't love a pair of wings for themselves? But when you start to think about it, wouldn't that just be the most inconvenient thing ever? Yes, the flying is great. And yes, they would look really cool. But here are some things I've thought about where I'm really glad there aren't two huge wings attached to my back:

Top 5 Authors I Would Like To Meet

Hi there. It's time for another Top 5 Wednesday post, since, you know, it's Wednesday. T5W was created by Lainey at gingerreadslainey and if you want to join in, you can do so here. This week's topic is Top 5 Authors We Would Like To Meet. I found this quite hard to put together because while I love reading their books, I probably wouldn't know what to say to these authors. Mostly,  I just want to hear them talk about anything and that would be fine with me. 

5. George R. R. Martin

What I usually say about George R. R. Martin is that I really don't want to meet him. He has written many scenes that made me cringe and that I could hardly read and I'm not sure I want to meet the guy who comes up with all of them. I mean, he makes his characters go through that and he thinks all of it up in his head. Of course that's what makes him such a great writer but it's also kind of scary. But I guess curiosity won the better of me and I would just ask him about EVERYTHING in the Song of Ice and Fire series.

4. Suzanne Collins

She is the writer of my favorite trilogy, so of course I want to meet her. If only to convince her to write another book. Or to sign my books. Or to tell her how much I love The Hunger Games.

3. Laini Taylor

She's an author I've only recently discovered but I fell in love. With her writing, her imagination and her books. I just want her to teach me everything so that I can write as good as her one day (that's not too much to ask, right?)

2. J.K. Rowling

I don't really have to explain why I want to meet her right? Right. I bet she's on everyone's list but that's no reason for me to leave her out. She's the person who brought Harry Potter to life. She deserves to be one every list there ever will be. I should probably read her other books before meeting her, though.. 

1. Rainbow Rowell

Now, she just seems like the best person on earth. I want to be her friend. I mean, of course I want to be friends with someone who writes books like that. So relatable and simply beautiful. She has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I will buy and read absolutely anything she writes. Can we please be friends already?

So that's it, those are my top 5 authors I want to meet. I hope you're all having a great week and thank you for reading!

What authors would you like to meet? 

Do you agree with my choices?